February 54:10 p.m.

Odors of raw poultry and raw pork and beef mingling with
fumes of pungent flowers, accenting reek of over-ripening
mangos and green oranges and then octopi and tuna and other
nameless sea harvests. Hand-tooled leather seethes its smell
from belts and from hats and from wallets and then there emit
the herbs, too, all arranged in tiny wooden drawers, or
spices. Or this stall blares pirated American rock music and
tropicales, while this vender marionettes a kid's rubber
crocodile so as to make you almost trip over the kid's rubber
crocodile, to make you consider the kid's rubber crocodile.
Vari-colored balloons at the entrance. Women bargaining.
Women gossiping. Parti-colored balloons at the exit. Men
discussing seriously. Men chuckling lewdly. Pots and
skillets and sizzling meats and chiles in that far corner
where at a round counter hunch-shouldered people lunch on
tacos. And behind the round counter a dark soup steams. And
above the round counter a soccer match animates a television
screen. A hundred furtive eyes seek that television screen:
From over a temporary wall behind which pile baskets high;
from around blankets finespun or gauche; from before t-shirts
blazing cartoon characters and sports emblems. Even the
tired old man in the security uniform stands transfixed by
the soccer match. Children fence with driftwood sticks
around the security uniform, charging his aisles, peppering
the chaos with their shouting and shrieks. A mangy dog
ambles through. A man strides through with a side of raw
beef. A man quarters a chicken. A girl pads by with a bowl
of steaming dark soup. A man paints your name on a grain of
rice. And these lanes you sidle through are so narrow that
from around a string of ceramic vegetables, or from around a
hanger of lace or linen table cloths, or from around a stack
of bottled vanilla, a face surprises you as it suddenly peers
into you severely, as it surveys your pass, as it returns to
its figures and calculator, or its gum chewing, or its
nursing its child. The affect is consuming at first,
visceral, until, suddenly, the market ejaculates you onto the
street, or onto the plaza, or onto the sidewalk and all you
can do is chortle and look behind you agog. Once this scene
so overwhelmed me that I was half blind to it. But so calm I
am now, on this trip. I see it all clearly. A man offering
coconuts. Another man hefting another side of raw beef. A
man leaning numb and bored before carefully arranged pyramids
of mandarins and pineapples. And then the votive candles for
sale. And then the crucifixes for sale. And then the
devotional paintings of Christ and the Virgin Mary and Elvis Presley.
And how organized it is, a very practical disorder. And the
sensory overload, the super-sensory assault, the assault on
the sense organs. I walk the myriad stimuli of the mercado
now and see it clearly. Such detachment this trip. Where is
my excitement? Ten years ago I would have waxed rhapsodic
just over the palm fronds, or the sea breeze, or the romantic
name of the city--"Veracruz." Now I wander through the
marketplace virtually unmoved. Hieronymous Bosch, I think of
now. Thelonious Monk. I've lost something in the passing of
that giddy inspiration. Callowness?

When you order a café con leche here at La Cafeteria
Real the waiter brings to you a glass at the bottom of which
swills about one inch of dark black coffee. To get the leche
meant to complement this café you ping the side of your glass
with a metal spoon. From thin air, it seems, another waiter
appears with a kettle full of boiling milk. Quite
theatrically then he pours the milk, lowering and raising the
kettle as the stream of milk arcs and then ceases. When the
glass is empty again you ping it again with the metal spoon.
This time the waiter arrives to provide you both the timid
inch of café and the theatrical glassful of leche. I must
say, it really does rival La Fonda Vieja.

By coincidence, I've positioned myself near the ladies
room. 'Twould be a roguish plot to hatch, faith! But I
didn't. Still, I watch the women come and go.

But without such detachment it would be impossible for
me to accomplish what I have come to accomplish, I think. It
is because of the calm, I think, that I can really look into
that around me; that I can discern what lives in this setting
that I did not capture in the unfinished novel. Without the
calm, without the detachment, I would not have the patience
to seek out the restaurant where Domingo's plot opens, or the
museum in which he experiences the pivotal mural. Nor would
I be sitting here right now and scribbling about this
calmness and detachment and beginning to wonder if perhaps
the calmness and detachment might be a step toward
understanding the mystery. I mean, the mystery must have
something to do with how Bach and Bosch and Montaigne viewed
the world. But how elusive! How speculative! How do you
even begin to approach such a question? Did Bosch and
Montaigne and Thelonious behold the world with calm, with
detachment? Is this a scantling part of how they did what
they did? Did they express something that lasted because
they could see something lasting? And did they see something
lasting because they were detached?

The detachment does not come naturally. Today even I
felt residual twinges of my early enthusiasms, those that
sweep you into the moment instead of letting you observe the
moment. When I finished studying the museum this morning, I
suddenly ecstatically thought I should scribble these notes
at the beach. The Villa del Carmen bus takes you there. I
refrained. Instead I swallowed carrots and fresh tortillas
in my hotel room, read Shakespeare and snoozed. That nap and
meal and reading better served the notes I just collected in
the centro than a strenuous trip to the beach would have; as
it will better serve the work I will do this evening on the
museum's exterior. And if I were reclined on the beach right
now I would not have commented to myself on this calmness and
detachment, and then stumbled into this thoughtstream that
led me to consider what such calmness and detachment might
contribute to my understanding of Monk's dissonance.

I need to clip my thumbnail. It digs into my forefinger
as I scribble. My forefinger aches.

La Cafeteria Real is quite large. It seems to occupy a
full square block, but it does not. A pharmacy on the harbor
side of the edifice is flanked by the northern and southern
arms of the restaurant. The restaurant wraps around the
pharmacy. The kitchen connects the arms.

Yesterday, on the harbor side, I scribbled beneath the
tall ship from Bangkok, before the boy swimmers, watching
amblers pass. Today, on the opposite side, there is no view.
The windows are smaller here, curtained; the mood cooler; the
waiters more attentive. Through the gap between the curtains
I descry a church steeple, the advertising offices of three
newspapers, and an ice cream parlor.

An old man stews near glancing at me now and again. I
expect him to address me if I stop scribbling. I find the
Veracruz accent difficult. I will keep scribbling. I'm
waiting for night to fall. When night falls I will return to
the museum to study its exterior facade by streetlight. I
expect to see it differently then. The old man speaks now at
the young waiter. The old man speaks at some length. With
circular gestures, he speaks. The young waiter figures there
like an altarpiece, simultaneously there and not. This old
man really wants someone to talk to. He has something of a
woeful countenance.

I wonder why I've not seen a La Michoacana. I've idly
sought this Mexican popsicle shop--and in vain. Its absence
perplexes me here in sultry Veracruz. What a fine and simple
treat those shops merchandise. Crushed fruit and water,
frozen. Voluptuously sweet and cold. Very popular. In some
towns you can find three of those shops situated on three of
the central plaza's four sides. The popsicles will no doubt
make an appearance soon.

As I re-read these notes a complement of four young
women entered and alighted at a round table some meters from
mine. They chatter away gayly in Spanish. I can hear their
voices. And their voices are passerine. But it is their
gestures that really captivate me. A toss of this one's head.
Then the storyteller opens her palms in emphasis, bends back
her wrists à la Ballanchine. Another combs her hair
unconsciously with small even fingertips. I've thought my
fascination with dancers might be rooted in this lifelong
preoccupation, in this appreciation for the smaller movements
of a woman. To watch a woman's arms swing as she hips along,
or her hands as she colors her nails, or the tilt of her
shoulders as she disrobes for a dip in the sea gives me an
exquisite pain. And when she is quite unconscious of herself
and naturally elegant that pain becomes acute. Is this not
what dance tries to capture, I wonder? To formalize? To
heighten? This natural unaffected play of the body? When I
see a ballet I invariably feel that same exquisite pain. And
a tightness in my throat, I feel, a constriction. I can
scarcely breathe sometimes.

I'm tired of dodging the old man's eyes. I will wait
somewhere else for night to fall. A plaza nearby, maybe. I've
motioned to the waiter for my check.